A special, 15th anniversary edition of Open Studios, this ten-day event celebrates the work of the 41 artists and artist groups currently in residence at ISCP with daily screenings.

Additionally, the public is invited to STUDIO B-LAST a three-part project organized by independent curator Sandra Skurvida evolving around the encounters that take place in a specific time – studio time. A studio visit offers a possibility to experience artwork – or a performance of work by an artist. The first part of the project consists of an ongoing exhibition in ISCP’s gallery spaces where invited artist Clifford Owens will collaborate with ISCP residents to create new performances, informed by his earlier series ‘Studio Visits’ and ‘Photographs with an Audience’. Finally, STUDIO B-LAST is hosting a roundtable conference that is free and open to the public with Claudia Canizzaro, Ana Paula Cohen, Clifford Owens, and Jovana Stokic.

ExhibitionApril 17–April 19, 2010

An Act Of Mischievous Misreading

When Harold Bloom suggested in his book ‘A Map of Misreading’ (1975) that any kind of reading, if strong, is always a misreading, he probably did not think of Meris Angioletti printing the pages of Edgar Allan Poe’s Auguste Dupin stories on top of each other. This exhibition curated by Anna Gritz expands on Bloom’s assertion and presents a selection of artworks that have taken their misreadings to an extreme, revealing the creative potential of making someone else’s work one’s own. Based on the concept of the trope in literature, a strategy in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning, the works in this show have plundered the canon of cultural history, using works against their original intention for the sake of giving emphasis to a new idea. Participating artists include Meris Angioletti, John Baldessari, Mario Garcia Torres, Terence Gower, Sean Landers, Lars Laumann, Edgar Leciejewski, Zena Verda Pesta, Gaël Peltier and Erin Shirreff.

The artists in this show present a study of willful misplacements, misreadings and misuses that as avenues of emancipation from the idea of Deutungshoheit (the sovereignty over interpretations) reinvent sources according to their own needs and interests. As a radical form of appropriation, these works blend homage and disrespect in a mischievous way. As an unruly form of history-writing the works break down chronologies and trigger misunderstandings that might cause reassessments through irony, parody and humor. Through association they present themselves as a postscript to an existing artwork, opening up a new discourse in the form of a continued series of misreadings.

An Exercise in Misreading, Sunday April 18, 5 pm:
In conjunction with the Exhibition An Act of Mischievous Misreading (AAOMM) a selection of artists and writers were invited to explore the creative potential of making someone else’s work one’s own and to respond to the works in the exhibition.

ISCP TalkApril 10, 2010

Performance: Gergely László and the Yad Hanna Theater Group

Gergely László and the Yad Hanna Theater Group presents The Collective Man, a sketch in seven scenes, performed by Gergely László and the Yad Hanna Theater Group. On April 10, Kibbutz Yad Hanna celebrate its 60th anniversary. Founded near Tulkarem – bordering the Westbank – by young Hungarian survivors of the Holocaust, Israel’s best-known communist kibbutz was named Yad Hanna (Hannah Memorial) in homage to the heroic memory of Hanna Szenes. The founders of the kibbutz – officially established on April 10, 1950 and famous for its committed leftism – also included the younger sister of Gergely László’s maternal grandmother as well as her husband, who are still among the hundred to live on the premises of the once exemplarily managed settlement. The Collective Man is part of Gergely László’s Yad Hanna Kibbutz Project on the reconstruction of the (hi)story of a community, presenting the richness of its differences, patterns and identities in the context of personal and collective memory. Inspired by a research on theatre plays performed on Purim celebrations in Yad Hanna, quoting archival photographs and conversations with members of the Kibbutz, The Collective Man will be telling a story of a small community, in continuous struggle with the problems of sharing and living together.